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The “Internet of Things” — technologists’ vision of a network of billions of connected devices —
has attracted the attention of tech giants including Cisco, Intel and General Electric, all of
which have internal business units dedicated to building the infrastructure for that network.

The market also could create demand for a new kind of IT specialists — those who can both
engineer new products and process the data they collect, analysts and industry experts say.

A 2011 McKinsey report estimated that the United States faces a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000
people with deep data analytics skills, and 1.5 million managers and analysts to make business
decisions based on their findings.

In response to this shortage, GE has been training data specialists internally for the past few
years, GE’s chief economist, Marco Annunziata, said. In 2011, the company opened a software center
in San Ramon, Calif., where hundreds of new employees were hired and trained to consult on Internet
projects across the company.

For instance, a specialist from the center might help employees in GE’s aviation subsidiary
collect and analyze data from jet engines to improve production and fuel efficiency.

Until the global IT workforce produces enough people who specialize in both data science and
software or hardware engineering, “We need to start developing them, to some extent,” Annunziata
said. GE hopes to train about 1,000 of these specialists.

The company also looks for these interdisciplinary skills in new hires, Annunziata said.

“We will have more and more need for people who are a combination of data scientists and
operation managers — people who have both an understanding of how to use data, how to use
analytics, and also an understanding of their own business lines,” he said.

Cisco, which recently announced plans to develop “fog computing,” or a network to collect data
from devices making up the Internet of Things, is also looking for similar hires, said Joseph
Bradley, managing director of Cisco’s Internet of Things division. But the company is also looking
for candidates who can collaborate with people in other industries, even outside the company, he
said, to ensure Cisco’s networks are supported.

“If you looked 10 years ago, across enterprises, 80 to 90 percent of innovation came from within
the company. If you think about that now, it’s close to 50-50. In some cases, the majority of
innovation comes from outside the company” as startups, hardware manufacturers and developers all
seek to take advantage of the Internet of Things.

Each point in the network is producing large volumes of data that need to be processed in real
time, and many IT training programs do not yet train graduates to analyze these streams of
information, McKinsey Global Institute analyst Michael Chui said.

A handful of universities have designed data-science programs to prepare students to work on
Internet of Things projects. For instance, in September, the University of California-Berkeley’s
School of Information unveiled a master’s degree in information in data science. All classes are
held online; the program’s first goal is teaching advanced statistics, software programming and
ways to process the data collected from sensors and mobile devices, among other skills. The
students are also required to study ethics and data privacy.

Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University,
among other schools, have introduced similar data-science programs.